Micah: Little Bastard
by Irkenzim123
Summary: Delve into the somewhat tortured past of Micah Balding, the possessed new leader of the Children Of the Corn. There are very, very few fanfictions of Micah out there, so I decided to make a little one-shot based on him since he is my current favorite character, (and favorite COtC character!) I made it as canon as possible; no OC's included. -suggestions appreciated!-


"Another argument?"

Danny turned reluctantly to see Micah striding to catch up with him, smiling to give off a friendly impression. But something unnerved Danny about his grin and the way he was trying to reach him. His face almost seemed... _eager_.

Since when did this introverted orphan care about his daddy issues?

"Yeah," Danny waved his hands, then stuffed them deep into his pockets. "I-I can handle it. It's fine." He kept walking, staring at the gravel as he did so, hoping Micah was satisfied with his little white lie. He was not in the mood for friendly advice.

Micah snickered softly. "You know Danny, I used to have problems with my father, too."

Apparently he wasn't going to shoo this fly away _that_ easily.

Danny watched as Micah glanced around quickly, as if he suspected someone was watching them.

"Adults are such hypocrites. It's like the moment a person turns nineteen, they... become this _thing_." He lowered his eyes to focus on the dirt road.

Blinking in confusion, Danny turned to him again, his curiosity getting the better of him. "What thing...?"

Micah stopped walking. He let his gaze wander away from Mrs. Burke's fallen house and all people who surrounded it, delving into his past.

"Well, with my father, if we listened to the radio, we sin. If we talk to girls, we sin."

Danny nodded at the second part, which seemed to be the case with his own father.

"And every sin demanded a beating," Micah seemed to be nodding to his own words, lost in thought. "To chase away the devil..." His jaw clenched and his face hardened as a dark, painful memory began to worm its way into his thoughts...

 _It was a year before the Gatlin murders. Micah's father had walked into the kitchen from his and his wife's bedroom to find Micah sitting at the old wooden table next to the window. The Balding's family radio sat on the tabletop next to his plate of a poorly constructed breakfast. Mrs. Balding wasn't home._

 _Micah had mindlessly switched on the radio a few minutes before and desperately searched to find something, anything, that could help him forget what he saw last night. He needed to block the vision. Gospel talk just wouldn't cut it today._

 _"What the hell do you think you're listening to, Micah?"_

 _His son didn't seem to be listening or focusing on anything in particular. He had his gaze fixed dreamily outside through the small window, messing with the uneven, feathery black bangs that normally fell into his dark eyes. His other hand clutched a fork._

 _His face was turned to the cornfield. The first rays of sunshine shone through the variety of brown and green corn stalks, lighting up their backyard._

 _A cool autumn breeze blew past the window, ruffling his hair and tickling the scarce leaves on the trees. A wind chime dinged softly._

 _"I said what the_ _ **HELL**_ _do you think you're listening to!?" Micah's dad's seething voice seemed to become a light year closer to him as his attention was finally captured. He loomed over Micah, standing next to his chair._

 _Micah broke his gaze from the window and slowly turned his head to the table. He stared at his plate and blinked meekly._

 _His father looked him over suspiciously._

 _"Dad, calm down; it's just music..."_

 _A hand whipped out and struck the side of Micah's face. He was caught off balance and fell off his chair and stumbled against the dingy, cracked wall. His plate banged on the table and his forked clattered across the old linoleum._

 _"Heretic!" He roared. "Sacrilegious rock music won't be tolerated in this household!" Micah's dad snatched up the little radio from the dinner table and turned it sloppily to one of the many gospel channels. The small tween shakily got to his knees and turned to face his still-yelling father, holding his face. "You know better! Satan for the ears, that music blares profane messages!"_

 _Micah rubbed his reddened cheek tenderly with his fingers. It hurt, but he didn't give his father the satisfaction of making him cry. Besides, that would make him seem weak, and he would surely get bitched at for that. Would Isaac think of him as weak if he cried...?_

 _"But I like it."_

 _His father stiffened at his son's unholy words. "_ _ **What**_ _did you say!?" he demanded._

 _Trembling all over, Micah stood up to face his father. "I like the music. There's nothing wrong with it."_

 _"_ _ **Nothing wrong!?**_ _" His father ran at him, but Micah ducked under the table before he could grab him and crossed the kitchen, now perched in the doorway like a dog waiting to be released outside. At least he could escape quickly if he needed._

 _"It's just music, Dad! God doesn't mind me listening to rock and you shouldn't either!" He felt his voice shaking far out of his control._

 _"Boy, what you need is a good beating. Satan is working on your mind, trying to consume you. He's always gone after you. I can see it in your eyes: they're black as night!" Mr. Balding reached for his belt, meaning to beat his normally cowering son senseless like all those times before when he had made the mistake of sinning._

 _"Put that thing down..." Micah murmured, feeling the veins in his head constrict. "There's no sense in that in the Lord's eyes."_

 _His father sneered nastily. "Perhaps you need_ _ **more**_ _than a beating to cleanse you of your filthy evil."_

 _"God has nothing to do with what music I listen to..." Micah whispered, loud enough for the man to hear him._

 _His dad said nothing, but slid a kitchen knife out of the knife block._

 _Micah couldn't hide the look of sudden fear in his face. His eyes grew large and he felt his heart beat even faster as the elder grinned eerily._

 _Micah caught the eyes of his own terrified face in the glinting reflection of the blade._

 _"God has to do with_ _ **everything**_ _we do._ _ **Everything**_ _we listen to. I would think you'd have learned what I've fucking taught you by now, Micah." He took a threatening step towards his son._

 _Micah tried to contort his face into an ugly mask of anger he hoped looked as fierce as he thought his father looked. "I know enough about the Lord. And I know that he hates people who swear."_

 _Mr. Balding took another step, clenching his meaty fist tightly. "The bible should have taught you not to contradict your parents, you little bastard."_

 _"I might as well_ _ **be**_ _one, considering what you've been doing behind my mother's back."_

 _His father froze, eyes widening in surprise, but the look was quickly replaced by a cold glare. Even then, Micah knew he had hit a weak spot. "I don't know what you're speaking of. Hell,_ _ **you**_ _don't know what_ _ **you're**_ _talking about!"_

 _Micah shot an equally icy stare back at his father and held it without blinking as he confronted him._

 _"Do not lie to me, Father. I know what you do, and you're worse than I am about following God's laws. He will reckon with you, for you commit fornication. I_ _ **saw**_ _you fucking the farmhand's wife, and now you're going to hell."_

 _His father's face twisted into something so terrible and sinister-looking Micah wasted no time to tear himself from the room and out the back door, hearing the heavy footsteps of his father's boots stomp and echo in his ears behind him. He raced through the pitiful backyard, knowing his father wouldn't leave the property to catch a maggot like him, but he ran anyway._

 _He ran and ran._

 _He continued to run even when sweat spread under his arms, soaking the material of his black, long sleeve button up shirt._

 _Micah didn't know where he was going, but he knew he had to get far away; far from the house of which the devil dwelled. He was halfway up a hill towards a mass of trees, and sweat poured from his forehead into his scraggly bangs._

 _Micah's right eye was so covered by his hair that he didn't see the log placed conveniently in his path soon enough; his foot collided awkwardly with the wood, sending him flying over it and landing hard on his back. Something jabbed him in his lower back and he fought the instinct to cry out in pain. He bit his lip to keep himself quiet until the pain left and figured he would just lay there. Who knew; perhaps relaxing in the dying grass would make him feel at peace and calm him down._

 _That presumption proved false. All he felt was itchy and his lungs ached from the impact._

 _The pale boy reached behind him to see what had hurt him when he fell; there was definitely going to be a bruise. He found the culprit and wrapped his finger around it; this object in particular was the only thing he owned that made him feel safe anymore:_

 _His knife._

 _He remembered... It seemed like forever ago, but it was only several months before:_

 _Micah had put together his weapon along with the other children in Gatlin to better prepare them for the ultimate deed they must commit once He Who Walks Behind the Rows commanded._

 _He didn't think his knife was anything special until Isaac gave a him rare, but genuine smile and nod of approval, creating a small burst of pride in the young Micah._

 _He had gotten their leader's attention -not Jedidiah or Mordecai, but him! - and that made him feel quite special!_

 _The feeling of joy never lasted, though. Everything in his life always seemed to turn to shit eventually, no matter how happy it appeared._

 _Suddenly, a loud boom startled Micah from his thoughts. He cracked his reluctant eyes open and, squinting through his black eyelashes, saw in front of him the sky darkened with storm clouds. "Just what I need..." He muttered as the first drops of rain began to fall; one dropped into his eye, making him flinch and blink it away hurriedly._

 _He struggled to his knees, put his hands around the log that tripped him up, then slowly crawled under the pitiful shelter of a nearby tree made up of nearly-naked tree limbs; he rolled the little log along with him so he would have something to lean against if he decided to stay the night here._

 _Sometimes he had to get out of that house for a while, not caring where, even if it was in the middle of a storm._

 _Micah sighed loudly, then thought back to the last time he saw his father; his eyes had shone with evil._

 _He sat there against the tree's uncomfortable trunk, hugging his knees as the lightning ricochet across the sky. Gatlin Elementary was visible for a split second; the lightning lit up the church of Gatlin next._

 _He tasted oddly salty raindrops sliding down his cheeks and seconds later the chilly October wind felt as if it were freezing every piece of the dampness on his face._

 _Minutes went by before Micah even considered that the drops of warm water on his face could be tears, but he could deny it no longer when he suddenly burst into them without warning._

 _Micah dipped his head into his legs and cried hysterically, not seeming to be able to stop. He felt like he had no energy. His shoulder shook and his chest ruptured with the choked sobs._

 _He desperately wished someone,_ _anyone_ _, was there for him in his times of need. His mother used to be the one who was always there for him._

 _She taught him that crying was not a weakness._

 _She would shush him when he did, which was relatively often. He was no baby, but he had been a victim of horrible reoccurring nightmares and terrors for as long as he could remember. He would wake himself up screaming bloody hell, at least once a week, covered in sweat._

 _Micah's father would accuse him of being a breeding ground for Satan's power, and even though_ _he_ _was the direct cause of the injuries found occasionally on Micah's body, his mother never seemed to ask about them. She probably figured they came naturally from when Micah went off to 'play' with Isaac and the other Gatlin children, just regular children being rough, and never thought twice about it._

 _The thought that Micah was sometimes abused probably never even occurred._

 _Micah wondered where his mother always disappeared to since he grew out of Gatlin Elementary. He noticed after a while that she would sometimes be gone for nights at a time._

 _Because of her disappearances, his father took any chance he could get to try to manipulate him, screaming that it was all Micah's fault, that she had to escape from his devilish aura._

 _It must not have bothered him too much, for her being gone gave his father plenty of opportunities to pick up any random woman and have his way with her, the old bastard..._

 _Maybe his mother was doing the same, Micah thought. His mother wouldn't commit fornication as well, would she? She was better than that..._

 _Perhaps she had just now figured out the truth about her lying husband as Micah did and took off for good without so much as leaving him a simple goodbye note so he wouldn't worry._

 _He lowered his head into his lap even further, his black vest poking against his runny nose._

 _Maybe even his own mother didn't really care about him, either..._

 _All he felt now was alone and scared. All he had was his knife... Isaac... And most importantly, the place he finally felt where he belonged: his cult._

 _A shiver ran up his spine._

 _Micah came out of hiding his face and glared around at his surroundings. The rain had stopped dumping buckets and turned into a light drizzle. In the distance the cornfield hid in the shadows, casting off dim rays of gold that called to him through the damp fog._

 _Micah placed his hand on the half-soggy log and felt around blindly for a grip. He tore a relatively weak chunk of wood from its base. Removing the knife from its sheath on his belt, Micah carefully pressed the blade -which he swore was sharper than a hawk's eye- into the hardened mass of splinters._

 _He clenched his teeth as he guided the knife to cut a figure into the wood. Tan pieces, all different shapes and sizes, tumbled from his hands and dotted his raven clothing._

 _Soon the wood began to take on a kind of form. It looked like a simple yet blocky human body._

 _Staring carefully at it, Micah couldn't help but grin as he slashed at the neck of the wood. He hacked at it with the blade relentlessly, face suddenly full of anger._

 _"I hope you can feel this, Father!" He whispered, breathing heavily_ , though he knew it was impossible.

 _His heart beat faster and faster with his rage, and with that he began shaking._

 _The blade slipped off and stabbed deep into his thigh, causing red blood to bubble up through his black dress pants; despite how anyone else would have screamed, Micah hardly felt it._

 _He lurched it out in one quick motion, teeth grating together._

 _His hand still trembled and it involuntarily dropped the headless wooden dummy into the damp grass. He felt (dare he say?) orgasmic, per se, in his mild destruction._

 _His mouth feeling inhumanly dry, Micah tried to swallow. He leaned back against the tree and sighed, feeling like a weight has been lifted._

 _All of a sudden, what Isaac had been preaching about all along had begun to make sense. Adults were the bane of the world. They were hypocrites, committing sin mindlessly and letting their bodies indulge in grievous animal desires._

 _Micah held his breath. He began to rub the keen edge of the blade as if its power were precious, nodding steadily and grinning quite madly._

 _"Yes, my father. You will be going to hell_ _ **very**_ _soon..."_

Danny stared at Micah wondrously, waiting to hear what he had to say.

The smaller boy's face remained pale and emotionless. But suddenly, a smile began to creep up the side of Micah's lips.

"And then one day," he turned to smile widely at Danny, "I caught my father with the farmhand's wife. Sinning... _most_ vigorously."

As he listened and watched Micah's tongue play at the edge of his bottom teeth, a horrible thought popped into Danny's mind. "Micah," he hesitated, then asked, "Were you glad when your father was killed...?" He had to get a clue to help him piece things together, because the hypothesis that just played out in his head was too vicious for him to ignore.

Micah paused, licked his lips and glanced up thoughtfully, which only unnerved Danny even more that he had to think about his answer. "The bible also teaches that, um... for everything, there is a season."

As Micah confirmed his own words with a wise nod, Danny looked down, wanting to get away to contemplate what he just listened to.

Wanting to figure out why Micah was so fucking creepy. Why he didn't just answer the damn question the way any other normal child would have. Why Micah's father became such a bedlamite. And most importantly:

What he was going to do about his _own_ father...


End file.
